Neville Goddard Lectures: “Life Has a Purpose”

29 Dec Neville Goddard Lectures: “Life Has a Purpose”

By Neville Goddard April 26, 1963

Life has a purpose, and that is saying God has a purpose. You and I may have plans in conflict with God’s purpose and God allows it for a short while and you and I can realize our dreams but only within the framework of God’s plan. As we are told in the Book of Isaiah, the 14th chapter, the 24th verse, “The Lord has sworn: ‘As I have planned, so shall it be, and as I have purposed, so shall it stand.’” No one will thwart God’s plan, God’s purpose. God’s purpose is to give himself to us, individually, as though there were no others in the world, just God and you; ultimately, because the gift is complete, just you. That is God’s plan, that is God’s purpose, and he’s mapped the whole thing out for us in the Bible. The entire story he told us in the Old Testament; the New Testament is the fulfillment of God’s plan. Men will not believe this; even the hundreds of millions who claim themselves to be Christians do not fully grasp it, if they do at all understand it.

Well, it is his plan; it is his purpose. Tonight, it is my desire to share with you what I have experienced concerning God’s plan. Night after night, I want to share with you the joy of a change in imagining, really. If I could take you with me and persuade you to believe that you are already the one that you want to be and that you could really believe that you really are and remain loyal to such an assumption that you really are the man, the woman, that you want to be, I know from experience that you would become it. I trust you will do it just as we are told in scripture within the framework of his purpose. You will not try to influence me, influence the other, but you will do it just as we’re told in scripture, to alert him that I am what I want to be, and do nothing about it, just live in it just as though it were true; and I, in a way I do not consciously know, I will become it. That I know from experience.

But tonight’s purpose is to show you to the best of my ability God’s purpose, which we said earlier, is to give you himself. In the very last book of the Old Testament, the thirty-ninth book, the Book of Malachi, he said, “The son is the honor of the father, as the servant honors the master. If then I am a father, where is my honor?” (1:6). That’s the end, the very last book. “If the son honors the father, as the servant honors the master, if then I am a father, where is my honor?” The entire thirty-nine books have prophesied such an honor, that God is going to give himself—God is God the Father—he’s going to give himself to me. And I do not know that I am a father. If I really am a father, where is my honor, where is my son? So the book closes on that note, the Book of Malachi. The first book of the New Testament begins to express beyond: he gave the son. But people do not understand this great mystery.

So tonight, listen carefully and let me share with you the mystery, as I know it from experience. For you could be rich, you could be poor, you could be known, you could be unknown, and you could be anything in the world; it hasn’t a thing to do with God’s promise. God’s promise is the most fantastic thing in the world, for he gives you himself. You actually become one with the body of God—it’s your body. You are he. You contain all other beings. So whether you are in part a rich man, a poor man, a beggar man, or a thief, these things are really not important. They don’t add up to God’s promise. But God’s promise is not given in ___(??) to any work of man. You can be the wisest man, the biggest man, or the richest man; it still doesn’t entitle you to his promise. His promise is a gift; you can’t earn it. It’s a gift, it’s grace, it’s all grace, and he actually gives you himself.